The precedent for building obedience by describing your organization as a “family” goes back a very long way. The most notorious example is probably The Family

The precedent for building obedience by describing your organization as a “family” goes back a very long way. The most notorious example is probably The Family International, a cult founded in California in 1968: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_International I don’t refer to companies or other organizations as families, or even “like a family.” There are better metaphors when you aren’t trying to manipulate people, and not describing your workplace as a family also avoids provoking the trauma for those employees who have issues with their family of origin. If you describe a company as being like a family, are you giving managers permission to cast themselves as authority figures over employees they will treat like children? It’s safest to steer clear of describing companies as families, with employees as members. Pitfalls abound.